The White Briefs: Quality Product & Sustainable Production

Committed to quality product and sustainable production and created with a steady vision of quality and humble sophistication, The White Briefs is a beacon of light in an industry otherwise dominated by mass production and often less than desirable cuts, fabrics and designs. Perfect for the guy who can appreciate the marriage of a quiet, clean aesthetic and top-notch quality, The White Briefs is definitely not your average underwear brand.

From Peter Simonsson, fashion industry visionary, who has worked with brands as varied as J. Lindberg, adidas and Bjorn Borg, and his wife Henriette Simonsson, The White Briefs is not so much ahead of the game as they are behind it. They’ve retreated back to square one to establish a product that is simple and clean, unbranded and completely basic. “When I started, I wanted to create something that makes sense,” Peter Simonsson told The Underwear Expert. “I wanted to create something that is basic, but still refined.”

The White Briefs truly believes that less is more. This is perhaps most evident in their use of high quality, Peruvian pima cotton which is certified for sustainable development by the Global Organic Textile Standard. Perhaps the most luxurious cotton, pima cotton dates back to its cultivation in Peru as far back as 3100 B.C. It’s prized for its exceptional softness and brilliant luster, and most of all, for its durability. It’s more absorbent than other cottons, too, and is highly resistant to pilling. This cotton, organically farmed, respects human health and the environment, but is also a model of sustainable development. It’s this reason that Simonsson asserts, “I see a lot of parallels with the food market, actually, which is all about what you put into your body and whether it’s good for you.” The White Briefs feels the same about their underwear and apparel. “What I’m trying to do,” Simonsson continues, “it’s something from the inside going the whole way out.”

Don’t confuse the brand’s use of organic and natural resources with a lack of innovation, however. “We’re trying to be innovative but still keep really understated at our core,” Simonnson says. Their innovation takes two routes. First, in their emphatic use of simple and fair manufacturing processes, and their collaborations. The brand has partnered with style icon Nick Wooster for The White Briefs for Nick Wooster to produce a line of high-end camouflage underwear and apparel as well as Fantastic Man, of which came a line of luxury mesh bottoms and tops.

One also can’t assume that The White Briefs is simple for the sake of being simple. Peter Simonsson, in his time as Creative Director of Bjorn Borg, was keenly aware and involved with the production of “marketing driven product,” he says. He created “very expressive and very printable” designs with loud colors to which design and comfort most likely played second fiddle. He gets it, and he’s aware, too, that changing the way people view their underwear–as a necessity that provides comfort instead of dictates it–is not always easy. “We’re trying to win the customer with the touch and the feel. And when they start to wear The White Briefs, they’re hooked,” he says. “You can’t just scream in their face that they have to buy it, they have to think it through.”

Regardless of whether it’s main stream or not yet, The White Briefs has definitely carved itself a niche. “We’re selling this into hotels and to hospitality accounts,” Paul Fleming of The WANT Agency told The Underwear Expert, “as well as luxury stores around the world. There is definitely a market for it. It’s selling.”